Department of Dermatology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, Bern, Switzerland.
Centro Studi GISED, Bergamo, Italy.
Br J Dermatol. 2018 Jan;178(1):229-237. doi: 10.1111/bjd.15660. Epub 2017 Dec 6.
Hand eczema has a high incidence and prevalence and has a negative impact on both physical and psychological well-being, with the risk of persistence as a chronic condition. Epidemiological studies on hand eczema provided mainly descriptive and risk analyses, but pattern analyses of variables associated with hand eczema, in particular chronic hand eczema, have not been explored to date.
To investigate and display the semantics of associations between variables of hand eczema obtained from the Swiss and German registries of chronic hand eczema (CARPE) to dissect patterns and novel links.
This was a cross-sectional study on selected variables from the CARPE registries. Associations between variables were analysed by means of an autoassociative system. A semantic connectivity map was generated by using a maximum spanning tree algorithm.
Baseline datasets of 1466 patients with chronic hand eczema (Switzerland: 199; Germany: 1267) were analysed. Occupational exposure had the highest impact in the total and country cohorts. We identified two areas of exposure linked to corresponding occupations that clearly demarcated the sexes.
This study, using semantic connectivity as a novel method of data analysis, reveals the complexity of features characterizing chronic hand eczema as well as novel association patterns that deserve further investigation.
手部湿疹的发病率和患病率都很高，对身心健康都有负面影响，并有持续为慢性疾病的风险。手部湿疹的流行病学研究主要提供了描述性和风险分析，但迄今为止尚未探讨与手部湿疹（特别是慢性手部湿疹）相关的变量的模式分析。
通过瑞士和德国慢性手部湿疹登记处（CARPE）的研究，探讨和展示手部湿疹相关变量之间的语义关联，以剖析模式和新的联系。
这是一项对 CARPE 登记处的选定变量进行的横断面研究。通过自联想系统分析变量之间的关联。使用最大跨度树算法生成语义连接图。
分析了来自 1466 例慢性手部湿疹患者的基线数据集（瑞士：199 例；德国：1267 例）。职业暴露在总队列和国家队列中影响最大。我们确定了两个与相应职业相关的暴露区域，这些区域明显划分了性别。
本研究使用语义连接作为一种新的数据分析方法，揭示了慢性手部湿疹特征的复杂性以及值得进一步研究的新关联模式。
